


Discolored

by dismantilingsummer



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4142772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dismantilingsummer/pseuds/dismantilingsummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Touka learns first hand that a kajuka is a dangerous thing.  AU where Kaneki returns to Anteiku before the raid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discolored

**Author's Note:**

> This is magna-verse, but inspired by the anime depictions of Kaneki's suffering.

What she wanted was to unspool time, reorder the cosmos inside herself, smoothen the jagged edges of the boy that used to be Kaneki Ken. What she received was his return, unprecedented, imperfect. She wanted to feel happy.

* * *

The most obvious change was his hair—once black, now snow-white—but the change that seemed most fittingly symbolic was his nails. His nails had regenerated after some terrible dismembering, but they had not regenerated properly, and the change, though seemingly insignificant. was actually insurmountable. What had been transparent was now black, and she did not know how to read this Kaneki. Here he came, dressed in his usual crisp clothing, with an eyepatch slung over his left eye, and the changes at once so subtle and earth-shattering that she did not know to reconcile any of it. His face and body, previously so expressive, so susceptible to the tiniest shifts in his mood, now remained cool, controlled, vaguely detached. Even his smiles were softer, more fleeting. His voice had dropped lower; it moved at a more neutral lilt. None of it was transparent. His nails had grown in black. It was as if dark blood congealed behind them. 

For the first week she danced around him, saying little during their shifts together, hiding her flinches whenever he caught her staring with aggressive glares and huffs. He seemed pleased to be back, even cheerful, but he also kept pulling at his uniform, as if it didn’t fit him quite right. She had heard him mention something about working behind the scenes as Yomo did, but so far nothing had been done about it.

As they closed up the shop at the end of the first week, Kaneki told her, “I’m going to move into one of the spare apartments above the shop.”

“Is that so?” It hadn’t occurred to her that his original apartment must have been emptied by now. She wondered how many of his possessions he had packed away first. Had he even owned anything of value besides all of those stupid books?

“Yes,” Kaneki said. “But the Manager says the spare apartment won’t be ready for another week. He says I should stay with you until it is.”

Touka busied herself at the sink so that he could not see her face. “If that’s what the Manager wants.”

“Thank you, Touka.”

She could hear the faint smile in his reply, and it was enough to prick her eyes with tears. She blinked them away, startled and puzzled. It was easier, she knew, to be angry.

*** 

The first night she sat at her desk and studied. At one point Kaneki came in with a cup of coffee and a book. “Do you mind if I…?

“Whatever.”

He placed the cup of coffee on the desk and sat at the edge of her bend, his knees tucked in. He opened the book and began to read. His coffee tasted better than it used to, but she didn't acknowledge this. She had on her headphones, but between songs she could hear him breathing and flickering pages. The sounds were comforting. He was a quiet presence. He was trying, in his own way, to make things up to her. He was trying to slip back into his old self. Perhaps it was possible. Perhaps it could be enough.

 

***

On the third night, Hinami visited. She had been staying with Banjou still, but now she wanted to return to Anteiuku, where Kaneki was. Touka said they could talk about it in the morning. She dug up some of Hinami’s old board games and coloring books, and when it grew late enough that she couldn’t put off studying any longer, she left Hinami and Kaneki to their reading. She put her headphones on, but she left the music off. Kaneki was reading aloud to Hina. His low voice floated through the door and amazed her. Finally! some expression again. She wasn’t sure if it was Hinami’s presence, or the act of reading, but there was real life returned to his voice, which echoed now in al of its proper octaves and tones. Touka found herself listening through the whole story, head resting in her arms.

***

On the fifth night, Kaneki was anxious.

She could feel the change in the air around him, as if his skin was giving off a slight buzzing. She told him she was going to study, the unspoken invitation to join her floating in the air between them, but he told her he was going downstairs to train. She did not bother asking about the jumble of books he carried with him. She sat at her desk and tried to concentrate in the solitude and silence.

By the time he returned it was well past midnight and she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom sink. He was covered in a sheen of sweat that made her feel oddly big in her skin. He waited for her to finish in the bathroom and then took a shower. She thought about his body, made up of all new muscles, naked under the spray of the water. When he finished she went to the kitchen for a glass of water, just for the opportunity to talk to him again. He was laid out on the couch with a book, his fingers drumming restlessly.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Not until I’m tired.”

“If you fall asleep on the job tomorrow, I’m not going to pick up your slack.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

No smile. She padded back into her room, and shut the door.

***

When she woke up again, she didn’t know what time it was. What she knew was that it was dark and Kaneki was screaming.

She propelled herself out of bed and into the living room. At first the darkness was a jumble of noise and shapes: something endless and jagged was flailing around the room, and the screaming was louder and choked with sobs and distorted speech. She found the light-switch just as Kaneki let out a terrible shout: “Nine-hundred ninety-three! Nine-hundred eighty-seven! Nine-hundred eighty—“

“Kaneki!” He was bent over on the floor, his arms clutching at his skull, while his half-kajuka just barely missed slicing her in half. She stumbled out of the way, too in shock to react with her usual speed, and in doing so caught a glimpse of his face, half-covered in the black kajuka mask. His kakujan was activated a fiery red. When she spoke his head inclined in her direction and he laughed, low and chilling. “Mother…I’m so fucked up…”

His kakuja whipped again and she leapt out of the way, furious with herself for not having yet recovered from Ayato’s attack, for being so helpless, for not knowing what the fuck she was supposed to do. She did not know this half-insane boy, with his tears and screams and laughter. She did not know how to be this strong. “Kaneki, please stop it!”

Blackened nails clutched harder at snow-white hair as Kaneki writhed in apparent pain, his kajuka unresponsive to her voice. There was a shattering to her right the television burst apart. She shielded her eyes as the glass settled and then threw her arms down. “Listen to me, Kaneki!”

He curled up in even tighter into himself, shaking violently and muttering wildly. She could only make out snatches of phrases—more counting, and gasping names, and then a stream of apologies that swirled together and that seemed to be directed at no one in particular, least of all her. His kajuka floated above him, jerking and swaying but more stable than she had seen it yet. Moving carefully in the growing wreckage of her room, she worked her way around him, until she faced his bent form head-on. She approached slowly, the way she might a rabid animal, and didn’t that hurt the worst of all, that this boy who had grinned his way around Anteiku and insisted on doing more than his share to help clean up and who simply wanted to be left alone to read at the end of the day—that boy was degraded to this screaming, grasping thing, this thing even less human than a ghoul, this thing so insane she couldn’t even understand it, not the way she could understand him, all those months ago, when he salivated and growled in the alleyway above his unconscious friend, because at least then he was just being a ghoul, and not a monster—

She took the sides of his face in both her hands as gently as she could. He froze under her touch, and she could hear his heartbeat working overtime, could feel every minute convulsions of his body. She lifted his face, and reached underneath the mask to wipe his tears. She did not break eye contact, even as the kakugan faded and the kajuka hit the floor with a startling thud. “Don’t you understand, you idiot, that you don’t have to be alone anymore?”

There was a squelching sound as his kajuka retracted. She pulled his body up, supporting his weight, and somehow found it in herself to smile as the mask cracked and fell off, made into deadened matter. His eyes were still wide on her; his cheeks glossy with wet streaks. Caught like this, terrified and sorrowful, Kaneki was as expressive as ever. As human. As he fell against her chest, new sobs wracking his shaking form, his heart beating the fast flutters of a bird, she felt something rising up inside her, some clean light feeling. When he finally pulled away she reached for his hand and kissed the blackened nails, one after another.

His voice was raspy and uncertain as he spoke: “Touka…I don’t…I can’t control anything…”

For his nails to have turned black like that, for them to have regenerated wrong, they must have been stripped away, over and over again. How strange it must be, she realized, to have so little physical evidence of something so traumatizing. Like it both happened and didn’t happen. Like it had stopped and had never stopped.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. I forgive you. I want to help. It’s okay.“

Hours later the sun began to rise, and the apartment--wrecked, but not destroyed--was cast into new light.

***

What she wanted was to unspool time, reorder the cosmos inside herself, smoothen the jagged edges of the boy that used to be Kaneki Ken. What she received was this return, incomplete, unfinished. He was not happy. But he was home.


End file.
